


it's our time now if you want it to be

by speccygeekgrrl



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Infinity On High era, Lots of kissing, M/M, a little bit of porn, really old stuff, ridiculous fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:52:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4515639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of FOB ficlets written in 2006-2008. Short, sweet, and fluffy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Glossy (Pete/Patrick)

"What you need," Pete said, leaning over Patrick's shoulder and smiling big for the camera, "is a little bit of eyeliner. And maybe some lip gloss."

"Go away," Patrick hissed under his breath, slightly grateful that he could get away without a smile, more grateful that no one noticed when he elbowed Pete in the side. "You know I'm not going to."

"Forget the eyeliner, just the lip gloss," Pete suggested the next time they were next to each other-- which was four photos later, after Patrick had hidden halfway behind Andy and slipped around to Joe's other side, doing a good job of avoiding Pete. "Just a touch."

"Why are you so--" 

"Hold it," the photographer yelped, and Patrick waited until the flash to continue his question.

"--determined to get me into makeup? Go tell Andy to wear some."

"Andy," Pete said, lips pressing right up to Patrick's ear awkwardly for a second, "doesn't have your lips. And your lips should be shown off, Trick."

"Will you two cut it out?" Joe, perched on the floor between their legs, reached up to smack indiscriminately at both their midsections. "Let's just get this done, okay?"

Weeks later, Patrick's fiery blush graced the cover of Rolling Stone, and Pete Wentz looked suspiciously self-satisfied at his side. The only picture of Patrick in lip gloss, though, was on Pete's Sidekick: Patrick hadn't let him put it on directly, but between the red of his well-kissed lips and the gloss that had rubbed off from Pete's mouth, it was more than enough to make Pete happy.


	2. a silence knot (Pete/Patrick)

Patrick's shoelaces are always coming untied because there are too many knots in them. It's too easy to look down and count out all the mistakes that he has to remember not to forget, the one by the little plastic thing at the end (it's called an aglet, which he doesn't need a knot to remind himself of) means to never look up when Pete makes that sound from his bunk, the one that always catches on the top eyelet of his right shoe says that it's okay not to lift his feet over a bridge or duck when they go under an overpass because that's like twenty percent of their driving anyhow, tunnels and bridges, overpasses and underpasses, and he stopped paying attention but it's not like his wishes haven't already mostly come true anyhow.

 

The knot in the very middle of the bottom lacing of his left shoe is for the wish he hasn't gotten yet. It's the spot that Pete swiped a black sharpie over one lazy afternoon on the bus, Patrick staring out the window and trying to work some chords out in his head, an incredible new bridge if only he can make it work, and Pete writing lyrics in, for what reason god only knows, a book of thick colorful construction paper. He'd looked up, smile sharper than the sunlight reflecting into Patrick's eyes, and drew a line right along the lace.

 _why'd you do that?_ Patrick asked, foot twitching away from Pete's marker, and Pete shrugged. 

_it gives your shoe character,_ he said, and he looked back down to what he'd been writing.

 

Patrick doesn't have that pair of shoes any more. They'd gotten torn up in New Jersey, but he saved the shoelaces, put the knot in and laced them through his new shoes. That was the first one. He doesn't think he needs the knot to remember. He's not ever going to forget that the boy on the other side of the bus is his wish not yet true.


	3. what is essential is invisible to the eye (Pete/Patrick)

It was a cloudy night, and Patrick Stump was trying to read.

It really shouldn't have been a difficult thing. Andy was on the other side of the kitchen, playing Trauma Center on his DS; Joe was stretched out on the couch in back, watching My Super Ex-Girlfriend ("All for Uma Thurman," he insisted). Even Pete was quiet, staring out the window on Joe's other side.

When Pete moved into the back, he slid across from Patrick with a serious look in his dark eyes. "Good book?"

"Uh... yeah," Patrick said. He was barely twenty pages in, and advancing at something like a page every ten minutes. Pete gave him a little lopsided smile and took up the staring again. Patrick wished he had a shorter book, something better to have in his hands. _The Little Prince_ or maybe _The Giving Tree_.

Half an hour passed. Patrick kept glancing up at Pete (roughly once every thirty-six seconds), whose breathing was too soft to hear; he half-expected Pete to be asleep, but he was simply being quiet. Patrick couldn't get a line out of his head: "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." Pete wasn't a tame thing, and this sudden placidity made Patrick wonder.

"You guys are creeping me out," Andy announced, closing his DS and standing up with a yawn. "Say something already. I'm going to bed."

"Good night," Pete and Patrick inadvertently chorused; Pete caught Patrick's eyes and smiled again.

"It's a beautiful night out." Patrick's brows knitted, and he put down his book, finally.

"It's cloudy. It looks like rain, actually."

"No..." Pete snagged his hand, fingers catching Patrick's and tugging gently. "You're not seeing the same night I am." Bemused, the singer let himself be pulled back to the lounge, where Joe was snoring none-too-gently on the couch. "Look," Pete ordered, voice quiet and firm and in Patrick's ear.

Patrick put a knee onto the couch, folded his arms along the back, and dropped his chin on them; Pete slid his hand into Patrick's hair, not pulling, but guiding him to look up higher.

The bus was in some rural stretch of highway, the kind where streetlamps were a rarity and city lights were nonexistent. And when Patrick looked up, he saw stars. 

"It's only cloudy on the horizon," Pete murmured as Patrick picked out constellations. "And that's the horizon behind us. Nothing but starry skies for us now, Patrick. It's all clear."


	4. peanuts (Andy/Patrick)

Patrick reminds Andy of Charlie Brown sometimes. Not all the time, not even close to most of the time, but now and then he'll catch the singer staring out a window or looking down at his shoes, and he gets the urge to say _good grief, Patrick Stump_. 

If Patrick's Charlie Brown, then Pete's got to be Snoopy, everpresent and evercreative, playing games no one else needs to understand for him to be amused. Joe gets to be Linus, which fits more than anyone would guess, and that makes it hilarious when Andy thinks he's Lucy, the big sister, sitting around taking nickels for advice and stealing Joe's blanket (because sometimes it got cold on the bus, and Joe's blanket was the warmest, even though it wasn't blue).

Maybe it does hold as an analogy, though. The urge to fuck with innocence runs deeper in Andy than he lets on, the verbal equivalent of pulling away footballs, cynicism and sniping. No one doesn't know that he likes to play little mind games, after all the time they spend together, but Andy doesn't think anyone gets how much he really enjoys them. Except, maybe, Patrick, who doesn't kick at footballs anymore.

It's getting cold and the wind doesn't let up, on this side of the country. The bus keeps moving, and so do they, and when there's time to breathe Pete's off battling the Red Baron, Joe goes to find the Great Pumpkin or some shit, who knows, and Andy watches from the doorway as Patrick pieces together something on the table, rods and strings and cloth.

"Good grief, Patrick Stump," Andy laughs when Patrick holds it up, a kite with a smile, and some Snoopy must have drawn the bartskull on the tail of the kite because the singer looks surprised to see it.

"Come on, I'm sick of being in this bus. Come fly a kite with me." Patrick smiles wider than the kite does, and when Andy steps closer he loops the string around the drummer's thin wrist.

"Only if you'll watch out for trees," Andy agrees, turning his hand to catch the string between his fingers; he expects the catch of the string but not the catch of lips, the soft painless tug of being kissed on the labret a familiar feeling but not from _Patrick_ , not from their own self conscious Charlie Brown.

"Come on," Patrick says again, voice soft but insistent like the wind neverending against the windows of the bus, "We'll be careful," and Andy lets himself be pulled along on Patrick's string, the slipstream currents of his unexpected whims. As soon as they step out, the wind takes the kite right out of Patrick's hands, and Andy holds on tight, not letting the younger man get carried away.


	5. (I'm watching you two) from the closet (Pete/Joe, Patrick)

The reason I was in Pete's closet was because I had been drinking.

...okay, good, you're coming with me on that one. I didn't want to have to explain how I ended up there, just generally why it happened. And the reason why, I'm sure it'll surprise you to find out, was alcohol.

Coincidentally enough, alcohol was also the reason Joe was in Pete's bed. With Pete. Who was not only also drunk, but also the source of the booze that Joe and I, newly matriculated, had gotten wasted on. I wasn't the happiest (or most coherent) of drunks, I'd found out a couple hours earlier; a little nap in the (only quiet place in Pete's house) closet proved that at the very least, I wasn't prone to hangovers, unless hangovers included hallucinations of the two guys that started the band you were in fucking like bunnies.

I was pretty sure that hallucinations weren't part of hangovers. It wasn't like I could see them... but I could definitely hear them, through the cheap board of Pete's closet door; I could see the cloudy sky, a half-empty glass that could have held water (but I didn't need to sniff it to know it was vodka, after the night before), a dirty slice of carpet, the ripped-up jeans Joe had been wearing last night. 

"Oh, fuck," Joe said the first understandable thing since I woke up (all else had been meaningless sounds, like they'd forgotten how to speak, growls and moans that made my cheeks burn), and then Pete laughed, and that's about the time I lost my mind completely. 

The open side of the door held window, glass, carpet. But between the hinges, even though I knew I shouldn't be looking, I could see. And what I could see (in a half-inch of space, cheap painted wood to either side and one eye getting wider by the instant peering through), it was hard to tell--

That was Joe's arm, shades paler than Pete's crossing his shoulders. The arch of a spine, there, that was Pete. Those lips: Joe's. A foot, toes curled tight: Pete's. The rhythm belonged to both of them, I couldn't tell who was setting it, but the realization hit me hard: I wanted it, too. I wanted that rhythm, those arms around me, even that stupid look on Pete's face... I wanted Pete, wanted him so bad that I must have let some tiny sound escape as I pressed a palm to myself, a weak attempt to ease the ache in my pants.

"Stay still," I heard Pete gasp, and if there wasn't a flash of brown eyes in my direction then there was no reason for me to bite my lips and---

Well, I'm the narrator, and I can be unreliable. It took me a while to come out of Pete's closet, suffice it to say. And I still don't know (never asked) if Pete actually saw me there. I'm sure Joe doesn't know.

At least I don't sit in closets any more when I get drunk. I learned my lesson in one.


	6. Patrick Stump and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Pete/Patrick)

Nothing was going right.

Patrick was home, for what felt like the first time in five years but had been maybe a couple of months, and _home_ was supposed to mean comfort, familiarity, good things. But he went to bed, totally exhausted, with chewing gum in his mouth, and now there was gum on his hat. It wasn't his favorite hat, but it was a good hat, and now it was pretty much a write-off.

There was gum on his pillowcase, too. It was sort of lucky that it hadn't gotten in his hair, but all that Patrick thought was _I liked that hat, dammit,_ and he tossed it into the trashcan on the way to the cupboard. All he wanted just then was a bowl of cereal and some of the shitty new Saturday morning cartoons, something to look at without having to think about at all.

There were six boxes of cereal in the cupboard he opened. Three of them were empty, two were stale, and one was the most boring of cereals. He poured the cheerios into the bowl anyhow, opened his refrigerator, and realized that he didn't have any milk. Cheerios got left on the counter; dry cheerios were for teething toddlers.

He couldn't leave the house without taking a shower-- not after the flying and the carrying shit and everything from yesterday-- so Patrick did that, swearing when the water went from pleasantly hot to fucking _freezing_ not even five minutes after he got into the shower.

The whole day went on in the 'let's see how much we can fuck with Patrick Stump' vein: his car stalled in the driveway; the lady at the diner where he went to get (not breakfast time any more) lunch got his order wrong; he got a cart with a squeaky wheel at the supermarket, and broke two eggs trying to carry everything in from the taxi at once; when he finally sat down to try and work out some music, just to give himself something to focus on, nothing came together like it usually did-- there was no flow, none of the simplicity that brought elegance out of his thoughts and onto the paper when he was in a groove-- he had to fight every single measure, and finally he just gave up.

By the time the sun set, Patrick felt like he was ready to cry. Everything had been going wrong-- not even big things, _everything_ , from the moment he woke up. He stripped the sheets off his bed almost violently, threw a pillow into the wall, thought about finding something to break and see if that helped.

When his cell phone rang, it actually made him jump a little. Pete, the only one with that ringtone, one Pete had recorded specifically one crazy night on the bus, _hey Patrick it's me, pick up your phone!_ So he did.

"Trick, go look out the window," Pete said, not even _hello, how's it going,_ just right to the point.

"Uh... okay?" Patrick wound the knotted cord of the blinds around his fingers, tight enough to turn his fingertips red, and when he raised the shades there was a brilliant blue sky out there, just a touch of twilight left to brighten the western sky, and a sliver of moon just hovering there, the purest white that could cut through the dirty sky. "Oh..."

"Yeah, I thought you'd appreciate that." Pete sounded... like Pete, that combination of smugness and friendliness and a little bit of possessiveness if that was the word Patrick wanted, he wasn't the wordsmith, that was Pete's place in their relationship. The one who knew what to say. The one who did these things. "So how's your day been? What's been keeping you so busy that you can't give your best friend a call?"

"It's... it's been okay," Patrick said, sitting on the edge of his naked bed and looking out the window still. The moon looked like his fingernails, tiny little slivers, a little bit ragged-- like someone had been nibbling at it, nervously, waiting and wondering, not for a phone call but for that little bit more, anything to show that it wasn't just possessiveness, it wasn't just best-friends, waiting for that tiny bit of love that was all he really needed from Pete--

"Earth to Patrick. Come in, Patrick. How is it in outer space, man?"

"Huh?"

"Are you trying to get away from me?" Pete's voice was a laugh, not mocking but... maybe, maybe a little bit... 

"I was thinking," Patrick said, a little softly. "About the moon." 

"You're going soft on me, Trick. C'mon, space cadet, talk to me. I'm bored as hell and I don't feel like driving out to your place."

"Oh man, my car died on me today." Laying back against the bed, it felt like maybe today wouldn't be a total bust after all. Pete laughed, and the fingernail of the moon turned into his smile when Patrick closed his eyes.


	7. hotel rooms (Joe/Patrick gen)

It seems silly, that Joe gets lonely in his hotel room now, but he's been so used to sharing the van or the bus or, hell, cramming the four of them in one hotel room and ending up (more likely than not) with Pete's feet in his face or Patrick's little snores like a lullabye; he figures it makes sense, and the other guys don't mind too much.

Well, Andy was pretty pissed the time Joe walked in on him in bed with those two chicks, but he totally hadn't put up the Do Not Disturb so it was his fault. Or so Joe insisted.

Patrick's the most understanding; he doesn't even wait for Joe to ask, just hands him the spare key to his hotel room like it's no big deal. He would be the one who got it, Joe gets that-- they've got things in common that Andy and Pete don't share with them, formative years spent on the road, in the van, doing the last of their growing up side by side in gigs and truck stops and cheap motel rooms when they could afford them.

So when Joe feels lonely, like he can't stand the night on his own any more, he sneaks down the hall, giving Patrick a courtesy knock before he lets himself in. Patrick's got his headphones on, messing around on his laptop, and he startles when Joe sinks onto the bed next to him, curly hair suddenly brushing his cheek. "Jesus Christ," he gasps, but he's grinning when he shoves Joe lightly. "Warn a guy next time."

"I thought you always expected me," Joe said, and Patrick rolls his eyes fondly and lets Joe snuggle up to his side, head against Patrick's shoulder, watching him play around on the internet for a while. They don't say much; there's not much to say, just the comfortable companionship of two bandmates who occasionally (or possibly frequently, now) cuddle and sleep tangled like kittens.


	8. smooth (Patrick/Joe)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written right after Patrick lost the sideburns.

Joe sleeps hard, like he's got something to prove about being unconscious. Usually, Patrick thinks it's endearing, even if it does mean he usually has breakfast alone, but today it's more useful than cute. It means no one's mocking him about taking Pete-worthy amounts of time in the bathroom this morning, and it means that when he's done, making uncertain faces at himself in the mirror, there's no immediate feedback to make him feel even less sure.

When he slips back into bed, stealing heat from Joe's shins to warm his feet up, Patrick realizes that even the pillow feels different now; when he leans in to steal a kiss that half-rouses Joe, his cheeks are vulnerable to the prickle of unkempt beard. Joe mutters something, shifts and throws an arm around Patrick to haul him closer, but his eyes snap open when his lips hit skin and just keep dragging, smooth from the bow of Patrick's lips to the corner of his jaw.

"Where'd it go?" he asks, stupid with sleep, and Patrick raises both eyebrows, sarcastic and self-conscious.

"Sideburn heaven," he says, and Joe just nods like that makes sense, cups a hand to Patrick's jaw and kisses his cheek again.

"Cool. Like it like that." It's so new, the shiny bright feeling of bare skin where it's been covered for so long, and it tickles when Joe rubs his cheek along Patrick's, slow and sweet and laughing quietly. "Smooth move, Stump."

It doesn't matter that he's still not quite awake, Patrick can't let that go by without hitting him.


	9. missed connections (Andy/Patrick)

It's not Patrick's fault they're late. It's Pete's. If Pete hadn't hidden Patrick's hats and left a shower cap in their place, provoking a serious freak out and several death threats, then they would have caught the plane instead of having to wait around in the airport. If they hadn't been in the airport, trying to keep themselves entertained until the next plane to London left, Andy wouldn't have finished his book early and gotten bored to the point of acting immature almost on Brendon Urie levels.

If Andy hadn't gotten bored and decided to screw with Patrick, there would be no story to write.

But they had been late, and they were stuck in Boston, watching the sky cloud over. Pete was curled up on one chair with his head on his knees, watching people go by, drumming his fingers on his shins in a rhythm only he could discern. Joe kept pacing, from a chair to the wall of glass, watching planes taxi and land and take off, then back to the chair to slump and close his eyes for a few minutes, then back to the window. Patrick had his eyes closed, too, but he was clearly not asleep, head nodding with the beat of whatever slipped from his headphones through his ears. The nodding made Andy's plan tricky, which was what made it fun.

Some had described Andy as a vegan ninja. ('Some' included Joe and Travis, Gabe, and Ray Toro.) Feeling he had a chance to live up to that glorious title, Andy made his stealthy way to the chairs behind where the other guys were sitting, fingers creeping closer and closer before ruffling Patrick's getting-too-long hair where it stuck out from a Red Sox cap, the only hat he'd been able to find at moment's notice.

The consequence of fucking with Patrick Stump's hair, _especially_ when he wasn't expecting it, was a violent full-body twitch with fairly impressive destructive capabilities. In this case, the object of destruction happened to be Andy's glasses; Patrick's fingertips caught the frames and sent them flying across the wide room, skittering across the floor with a sound that made everyone wince in sympathy.

"Oh my god," Patrick was immediately contrite, pushing down his headphones and apologizing profusely, even though Andy had been the one fucking around, "Oh god, Andy, I'm sorry--" Joe was already bringing the spectacles back, and they were amazingly trashed, one lens completely missing and the other cracked through, the left arm twisted out. "Sorry," he said again lamely, looking up at Andy. 

"Relax," Andy said, taking the broken eyewear and squinting down at them. "This happens a lot." Lips twisting down to the side for a second, he tossed the glasses in a nearby trash can. "Which is why I carry contacts. What did I do with my bag?"

"Your carry-on?" Joe sounded like he hoped Andy wouldn't say yes. Andy said yes. "Shit."

If Pete hadn't stolen all of Patrick's hats, he wouldn't have needed a place to store them, and he wouldn't have shoved them all in Andy's carry-on bag. If Andy hadn't already taken his book out of it, he might have noticed earlier, but his carry-on bag (bearing extra book, contacts, and fourteen hats of various styles) had been checked with the rest of their luggage. If Pete hadn't made Joe help, Andy might never have found out about this, but when Joe spilled his guts in front of both parties wronged by the prank, it was a unanimous decision to make Pete suffer once they landed in London.

Until then, Patrick offered Andy his pick of the books in his own carry-on. Andy pulled out a dog-eared copy of _1984_ , picking up where Patrick had left off and falling into the familiar story easily. From time to time he would look up, unable to see anything out the window, barely able to identify Joe across the room; the hair gave him away, even as a nearsighted blur. Patrick's music leaked from the edges of his headphones, gracing Andy with a few snatches of what Andy tentatively identified as David Bowie circa Ziggy Stardust. Every time a boarding announcement was made, Andy paused his reading, eyes stilling on one word as he listened to the gates and classes and delays and detours read off by a soothing female voice.

"Hey," Andy finally nudged Patrick's shoulder, gave the younger man a moment and tugged gently at the back of his hair. Patrick tensed instead of taking a swing, that time, and he tipped the brim of his cap up when he lifted one headphone. 

"Sup?" Moonage Daydream was suddenly clear in the air; Patrick fumbled for his pause button. "Sorry. What's up?"

"Which way is the men's room?" Andy waved vaguely around. "I can't read any of the signs..." 

"Oh, shit. My bad, man... come on, I kind of have to go too." Patrick dropped his bag and headphones next to Pete, who barely reacted; Andy kept pace a step behind Patrick, trying not to look too obviously blind despite a few near misses with other people walking around. 

If Pete hadn't stolen Patrick's hats, they never would have been late, and Andy's glasses wouldn't have been broken; Andy wouldn't have needed Patrick's help, and Patrick never would have been able to scan the bathroom, find it empty, and pull Andy into one of the handicapped stalls with him. Before Andy knew quite what was happening, Patrick's lips were against his own. By the time Andy's mind caught up with the rest of him, he'd curled a hand at the back of Patrick's neck, letting the shorter boy hug him tightly while they smooched. When Patrick rocked back on his heels, looking a little guilty but mostly pleased, Andy couldn't help laughing a little bit.

"What was that all about?" he asked. It was far from the first time Patrick had surprised him with such a display of affection, but usually it happened backstage or in a hotel room, not an airport bathroom. Patrick shrugged, grinning as he pulled the brim of his cap down.

"You look cute when you can't focus. Not really being able to make eye contact..." His hands motioned a little, toward Andy, who couldn't see what he meant. "You can't make one connection, it's nice to make another."

"I'm sure that's what was on your mind," Andy said dryly; Patrick laughed.

"Yeah, no, you caught me. I just wanted to make out. Is that cool with you?" For once, Andy couldn't read by his eyes whether Patrick was joking or not; he decided to take him on face value and back him against the stall wall, brushed metal making Patrick's hair that much more red in contrast. When their noses brushed, Andy recognized the look in Patrick's gaze: they might be here for a while.

"Did you get lost or something?" Joe asked when they got back half an hour later. "Or did you sneak off to Fenway?"

Andy fixed the navy blue Red Sox cap over his hopelessly mussed hair, gave Joe an enigmatic grin, and sat back down next to Patrick with his copy of _1984_ ; if anyone noticed Patrick's ankle brushing against Andy's, no one said anything.


	10. tell me who my hands were made for. tell me who my mouth was made for. (Pete/Patrick)

Headphones tight over his ears, fingers busy going between his laptop beside him and the guitar on his lap, Patrick neither saw nor heard anyone come into the room, completely encompassed in his work. Pete leaned against the doorway casually, in no rush to get Patrick's attention, more than content to watch his fingers fly, the little lines between his brows and the way he bit his lip when concentrating, the little half-shakes of his head as he tweaked and re-did until he was satisfied.

When Patrick finally looked up, he almost jumped off the bed in surprise, pushing the headphones off quickly. "Jesus, Pete, were you _planning_ on giving me a heart attack?"

"Comes with a cherry coke and a side order of fries." Pete grinned, flicking the brim of Patrick's hat as he came closer. "Nah, just watching you do what you're made to do."

"And yet, I don't trust you," Patrick shot back dryly, making Pete's smile flicker and come back twice as bright.

"As well you shouldn't. Show me what you've got here?"

\----

It doesn't matter how often they do it; the endorphin and adrenaline of captivating a crowd always goes directly to two places: Pete's head and his dick. Patrick doesn't bat an eye when he comes out of the shower, wrapped in a scratchy overbleached towel and shivering in the airconditioned room, to find Pete stretched across his bed, dark-eyed and sleek, all gold and black against the tacky paisley blanket.

"You couldn't wait for me to get dressed?" Patrick gripes, and Pete smiles up at him, a lazy are-you-kidding look curving his eyebrows.

"Why would I want you to get dressed?" He takes his feet off Patrick's pillow, leaving dampness in the shapes of his soles in their wake, and Patrick sucks on his lower lip and watches the way a single drop of water works its way loose from Pete's hair as he sits upright, how it traces down his temple, over a cheekbone, working its way down like a tear to catch in the narrow cradle of his collarbone. He's too focused to protest when Pete tugs away the towel and spreads warmth through the palms of his hands into Patrick's hips.

"Pete," Patrick murmurs, a beat too late; there's already too little space between them, and he thought they were over this, hadn't Pete been the one who told him they weren't doing this any more? But that's his nose against Patrick's soft belly, his lips making a compass rose of kisses around Patrick's navel.

"You're my north star, 'Trick," Pete says, a low mumble, "you're the sunrise and the sunset."

"Am I penguins at the south pole?" Patrick tries to make a joke, anything to put iron where his knees are going to jelly, to give him strength while Pete wages war against his better judgment.

"You're polar bears, too," Pete agrees, and there's nothing in the world that can save Patrick from his arousal, bumping the underside of Pete's chin; Pete closes his eyes, still smudgy from eyeliner that never really comes off, and ducks his head, shuts his too-quick mouth around Patrick and the dam breaks.

"Oh, fuck, Pete." He's got both hands on Patrick, holding him steady, and Patrick's fingers are going to leave prints on both Pete's shoulders. Patrick feels helpless, ginger hair dripping around his face and water drops falling on Pete like rain shaken off the leaves of a tree. "It's been too long-- why did you wait so long--" Pete's got a whole language that he speaks with just his tongue and his fingertips, an apologetic squeeze at Patrick's ass and a hum that races through his nerves like a revving engine.

It really has been too long, weeks Patrick's been feeling like papercuts between his fingers, the tiny sharp hurts of intimacy denied, but now Pete's over it or something, he's not going to question it right when Pete's stopped saying _no_ and started saying _now_. "Pete, god, slow down. You're not giving me a chance--" Pete runs his nails over Patrick's skin, and Patrick groans and thrusts, going deep, and Pete just takes it like he always does. "Shit, you were made to do this," Patrick breathes.

That makes Pete pull away, his hand taking over, and he looks up at Patrick with bruised, spit-slick lips, and says, "I was made to do this to _you_ ," and Patrick comes right across the necklace of thorns, silent and shocked and spineless with pleasure. Pete looks smug as he gives Patrick a nudge, guiding his fall onto the bed, and leans over him, filthy and gorgeous and smirking. "I missed you too," he says, kissing Patrick once before he grabs the scratchy towel and wipes it across his chest.

Boneless and breathless, Patrick reaches out, finds Pete's hand and twines their fingers together.


End file.
